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Monday, December 21, 2015

Did you notice that little bit of extra in the post title? Yep, this is actually Christmas Week, so expect the gift giving to be hot-n-heavy (I also expect OSR Christmas to spill over into next week but that is nothing new - lots of gifts to give out.)

This time, none other than +matt jackson , map maker extraordinaire, if donating the gifts, and my what gifts they are!

I have tons of original maps scattered around the house. How about I fill two large manila envelopes with the original, hand drawn maps. Mailed anywhere on the planet.﻿

So, two folks will receive gifts from Matt. How frikkin' cool is that?

How do you get one of these two packages of map nirvana?

Tell us how you would use the map pictured above. It can be as short as a sentence or as long as a paragraph or two. One package will go to a random entry and one will go to the entry I consider the most creative. Leave your comment on this very post before noon, Wednesday Dec 23, 2015.

This will become the secret lair of a sect of She Who Cannot Be Named, The Goddess of the Pale Bone, the Destroyer of Planes. These cultists are working to manifest the Goddess on this plane to destroy it. Her worship has been banned for millennia, her name excised from all monuments and documents. To follow her is a death sentence.

That looks like the last redoubt of an order of knights, set to swarm forth and save their kingdom again. The part that sticks out is a ship dock to load and unload the cargo and knights, the other spaces are the meeting areas to discuss strategy.

Bandits' hideout, on the shore. The small dock is unassuming and partially submerged. The small cave entrance is partially obscured by hanging moss. The natural cave has several small "chambers", which are used for storing crates, barrels, and other stolen goods.

It's a public park in the Underdark. Little Drow kids are playing on the upper left portion, where there are only two ways out, and they are easily guarded while being free to form their pecking order and play without interference from adults.

Meanwhile, all those picnic tables on the right are perfect for having lunch and spreading out maps so we can plot our raids in peace while the kids are playing.

This is a ruined temple inhabited by corrupted fey. This used to be a temple to a good aligned earth goddess that was allied with the fey. A high priestess came into possession of an object cursed by evil. This object corrupted the high priestess. She revolted, destroying all in the temple, finally being killed by the fey. Angered, the fey hunted down remaining priests of the order. They stayed in the temple as a base of operations being slowly corrupted by the chaos object. Now, the temple is forgotten, inhabited by the undead priests and evil, twisted fey.

The investigators enter, chasing a Roman cultist into the temple of Pluto; he disappears through a hanging curtain in the back wall. Which way did he go? Why are there so many chambers carved into this section of the Palatine Hill? What evil summoning ritual occurs on the lay out of stone slabs? Will somebody manage to come around the other way and get the party from behind? Let's find out!

Awesome. I would take this and make it a bandit hideout. Except that all the bandits are there, dead, with no signs of a struggle. PCs have been hired by the Thieves Guild to investigate what could have caused it.

Nothing too creative here. I'd use it as a badly looted ruin of a crypt. The rectangles are sarcophagi. At three squares long I think they must have been hill giants. So it is the ruins of an ancient hill giant crypt. Looted by, and squatted in, filthy degenerate modern hill giants. But maybe there are some cluse about the lost, advnced race the hill giants descended from.

This place looks like it would make a cool feast hall for a tribe of Stone Giants. Assuming ten foot (or perhaps even twenty foot) squares, those big rectangles become massive stone tables. They would be twenty or thirty feet long at ten foot squares or forty to sixty feet long at twenty foot squares.

I would use this to represent a ruined arcade from an ancient civilization that was created by a wizard/programmer that had a knack for designing incredibly realistic interactive illusions. Each block on the map represents an artifact that can generate a virtual reality environment for the characters that activate it. Each environment will have a built in game or puzzle the characters can work to solve. Instead of making these puzzles from scratch, I'd probably break out my old book of Grimtooth's Traps here and use some of the wackiest traps that I normally would avoid because they are too deadly or off-theme. Alternatively, I might choose some of the most silly or terrible monsters from the monster manual, and have them act as game "bosses" in the illusionary scenario.

Characters "killed" in by a game are merely ejected from the illusionary environment. Characters who solve the puzzle or beat the boss monster might gain some treasure that is only an illusion in the character's "real" world, but acts like the real thing in a virtual reality generated by the artifacts or against illusions created by opponents in the real world. An example of such treasure might be a magical sword that is worthless against "real" opponents, but can slay or dispel illusionary monsters. I'd give such a sword some ridiculous powers that emulate the abilities of some well-know video game characters to shoot fireballs or freeze rays just to enhance the arcade quality of the puzzles.

Well, since that's obviously a peninsula jutting out over the inky inchoate void, and the circles atop it are clearly pylons of antediluvian wizardry sending out a repulsive force pushing everything away from them and toward the dizzying edges, I would send my intrepid PCs into battle upon it.

It will be the last stand of the primordial ur-master, who can only be truly defeated by throwing him into the formless darkness to fall forever.

Cordium, an exotic collector of creatures, specializing in the subterranean variety. While his collection is not permitted in any civil lands, he often bring samples of his collection to various parts of the kingdom during celebrations as an attraction. Many of the creatures he brings are the non-lethal type, but he always brings a show stopper, to amaze and terrify the crowd. This map is the site of on of the attractions and it is here Cordium has discovered his keys are missing as well as his show stopper!

I've already one, so I'm not entering so much as entering on the behalf of one of the gamers in my area, Jim Delvasto. Jim grew up owning the D&D boxed set, but having no one to play it with. He's come to active gaming a bit later in life, plans on attending his first Gary Con next year, and has built his own Sultan-Style gaming table. He's invested in Dwarven Forge and really brings love, creativity, and enthusiasm to the hobby.

I would use this map as a character hook for another adventure later on in a campaign. The PC's would find this map as a treasure in a current adventure, along with perhaps a hand written note within the same scroll tube that a treasure of great power was hidden in this cavern, but only give them fragments of the information they need to find it's location.

Playboy mansion of the Jötun, They've borrowed the God's lawn-mower and never had it returned. Brave adventurers on a quest to get the lawnmower of the gods! See the sleeping dens and pleasure halls of the Jötun and fend off the giant hounds which they breed for the pleasure of watching rend the unwary in deep pits for sport. Gain allies in the frozen north if able to sway the Jötun into returning the lawnmower, or cross them at the players peril.Something Gonzo like that!.

It's an old, small dwarven caravansary in the underdark. You can see the remains of the fence and storage area out front. To the right is the small bazaar and common room; the left is the kitchen and small dining area. The room in the rear is the caravansary's storage and staff quarters. It's been abandoned ever since the last war with dark elves.

This is the goblin hideout where they are kidnapping people in the surrounding towns to dig an ancient magic item from an underground mine that will be used to summon (what they think is) the goblin god of war. They are actually being played by a group of necromancers bent on finding the tomb of the lich lord who are in fact being sold a bill of goods by an evil mage wanting to find the Staff of the Unbroken Mind which will allow him to control the goblins and sic them on the necromancers who keep summoning these horribly smelly zombies who do nothing but break all the good china.

It's hard to explain. The potter's guild is a cutthroat organization where innovation and new designs are the surest way to power, fame and riches. So when Antoine disappeared, at first no one paid heed as all figured he was doing research or experimenting with a new glaze. It was a good three months before his absence started being talked about.

Antoine's mining operation move quickly once he convinced the Mossboil goblins that he could replace their shattered totem. The Buzzrocks had raided and appeared to be stealing their chickens, but no, their main force charged for the totem and dashed it upon the ground which threw the entire tribe into chaos. The Buzzrocks then took pillaged everything in sight, knowing the Mossboils would disintegrate without a holy fetish.

So now, three months after his disappearance, Antoine has returned from someplace he will not speak of. And the bowl he presented to the lord-mayor was absolutely exquisite. The depth of the glaze and the suspended particles that reflected and refracted light.... Needless to say, determining the location of his source and the secrets of his new found success instantly become a priority.

Little did the guild know, but Antoine had been elevated to chief of the goblin tribe. The bowl was amazing but the tribe's new totem awed and cowed the entire tribe into subservience. Antoine actually hopes his rivals discover his laboratory....

I would use this map as a necromancer's lair. The opening cavern has many large rocks and boulders that his undead minions can hide behind to surprise intruders. The large main cavern has many stone slabs with undead projects in progress and closed coffins containing dead bodies waiting for the evil magician to animate. The walls appear to have large crystals or ebony stones sticking out of them which attributes to these caverns supernatural power of death and decay which enhances the necromancer's magic in raising the dead. The first smaller cavern to the left behind the curtain would be the necromancer's living quarters with a bed, small library, desk, cabinets for food and drink. The final cavern behind two locked doors would contain any valuables, extra supplies, magical components for his undead experiments and a big bad undead guardian.

Ancient grave site by a river. Broken down dock, with just the pilings visible at low tide. Stone funeral slabs/coffins in the back, with broken bones of the guardians in them. All "protecting" a secret chamber that has been looted, but still retains intriguing friezes and scraps of scrolls suggesting rituals to raise something that man was not meant to know of... The question is, who took the rest of the materials and why?

A long-forgotten cave grotto infused with the lifeforce of the stone itself, with the entrance pillars of its portico now snapped off into jagged teeth.

Inside, the grotto is still lined with pulsing, irregular crystals as small as a coin to larger than an ogre, dangerously unstable and liable to explode in destructive energies if so much as scratched. but the risk can be worth it if adventurers -- or more nefarious forces -- can reach one of the glittering, perfectly formed slabs that jut from the ceiling and rise from the pebbled floor. Each slab carries a neon-bright light tracing on each flat facet, depicting a creature never before witnessed; whoever touches that facet and breathes upon it calls the entity into life from the stone. These earthbeasts are often powerful, always strange, and completely loyal to the one who "birthed" them.

The town of Redwater sits on a peninsula sticking out into the salty sea. The long houses of the seven major clans, overshadowing the smaller buildings of the town, sit to the south and east of the freshwater lake in the middle of the pennisula---a lake the color of the setting sun. The inhabitants pronounce the town's name as wrote-water, after its original Germanic name Rotwasser. Outsiders emphasize the rot.

This map looks a bit like an archaeological dig to me. Each of the big rectangles would be a sarcophagus from an antediluvian civilization. Most would be filled with eldritch devices of unknown purposes. Some would contain other things...

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Contributors

Why "Swords & Wizardry?"

Believe me when I say I have them all in dead tree format. I have OSRIC in full size, trade paperback and the Player's Guide. I have LL and the AEC (and somewhere OEC, but I can't find it at the moment). Obviously I have Basic Fantasy RPG. Actually, I have the whole available line in print. Way too much Castles & Crusades. We all know my love for the DCC RPG. I even have Dark Dungeons in print, the Delving Deeper boxed set, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea (thank you Kickstarter) (edit) BOTH editions of LotFP's Weird Fantasy and will soon have some dead tree copies of the Greyhawk Grognards Adventures Dark & Deep shipping shortly in my grubby hands awaiting a review..

I am so deep in the OSR when I come up for breath it's for the OSR's cousin, Tunnels & Trolls (and still waiting on dT&T to ship).

So, out of all that, why Swords & Wizardry? Why, when I have been running a AD&D 1e / OSRIC campaign in Rappan Athuk am I using Swords & Wizardry and it's variant, Crypts & Things, for the second campaign? (Actually, now running a S&W Complete campaign, soon to be with multiple groups)

Because the shit works.

It's easy for lapsed gamers to pick up and feel like they haven't lost a step. I can house rule it and it doesn't break. It plays so close to the AD&D of my youth and college years (S&W Complete especially) that it continually surprises me. Just much less rules hopping than I remember. (my God but I can run it nearly without the book)

I grab and pick and steal from just about all OSR and Original resources. They seem to fit into S&W with little fuss. It may be the same with LL and the rest, but for me the ease of use fit's my expectations with S&W.

Even the single saving throw. That took me longer to adjust to, but even that seems like a natural to me now. Don't ask me why, it just does. Maybe it's the simplicity of it. At 45 48, simplicity and flexibility while remaining true to the feel of the original is an OSR hat trick for me ;)

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